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Barry Lam

@hiphination.bsky.social
2.1K followers 581 following 774 posts

Philosophy professor at UCR. Podcast at Slate. Associate director at Marc Sanders Foundation. hiphination.org

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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Miguel Rojas is quietly a hero standing amidst greats. He will not be a hall-of-famer, makes a tiny fraction of some of his underperforming teammates, but boy does he play like a champion, every time he's on the field and in the batters box. He's my favorite Dodger.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
fuck yeah
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Returning in January 2027. Are you still following or subscribed?
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I was taught Ostrom without Hardin, this was 2000!
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Leaving the Annual General Meeting of the Marc Sanders Foundation and really cool things are going to be happening for philosophy in the next few years.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I woke up to an email and I think my institution is trolling me. There is a media team writing newsletters and making videos just for the procurement, travel, and real estate admin…at a state university! ucr.bmeurl.co/1439D905
ucr.bmeurl.co
Insider News
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I was interviewed longform about the ideas expressed in the Boston Globe piece, so I elaborate, with stories, evidence, and charitable reconstruction of why administrators feel the need to hire more of them, and contract more software. I also introduce the "assessment-industrial complex."
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I don’t know why but for some reason, my YouTube algorithm today thinks that I want to see a jiujitsu fighter beat up a line of frat boys.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Malcolm Gladwell observes that city of Los Angeles has the same population as Berlin but Berlin has >18,000 police officers and Los Angeles has 8,500. But Los Angeles already spends double per capita on its police department as Berlin. If LA staffed LAPD at Berlin levels, it’d bankrupt the city.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Just like that I suddenly have a free ticket to My Chemical Romance at the Hollywood Bowl. It was supposed to be a family trip, but the teenager is now out. Apparently, “it’s a concept album about the progression of cancer from diagnosis to death” wasn’t the winning pitch I thought it was.
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Reposted by Barry Lam
Justin Weinberg @dailynous.com · 24/09/2026
A few adjustments still need to be made, but Daily Nous is back online...
dailynous.com
Back - Daily Nous
One day, I’m posting here about how to address AI risks, the next, Daily Nous suffers from a “critical error” and goes down for over […]
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
If you decide that you don’t want your affluent kids segregated from poor kids, because you think they’ll make friends and learn a lot by being around all kinds of kids, people on the internet will accuse you of “using poor kids for the moral development of your rich kids.”
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
‪None of us know the right level of deprivation of good things we can financially provide for our children that is ideal for their moral development. We know there is a cutoff that is abusive, and another one that is corrupting. But everywhere in between is a muddled mess.‬
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Well played sir.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
This thread 100%, and not just because I was also born in 1979.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
My niche take of the day is that pocket screw jigs ruined craftsmanship in home carpentry. I’m surprised the New Yorker turned down this pitch.
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Reposted by Barry Lam
Lindsay Brainard @lindsaybrainard.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
... Are you ready for it? The Philosophy of Taylor Swift is out next week! 🥰 Now available for preorder: a.co/d/02Yq3X9P
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Gotta say I’m in my late 40s and pretty good at staying on top of the news, but I don’t remember any midterm conventions.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
My understanding, and its limited because I don't watch Carlson, is that the true isolationist wing of MAGA have become single-issue voters this term, and it is anti-Israeli wars. It trumps even border issues.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Blue checks pay for boosted privileges.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
That's all right, no one ever notices the asian dude in the background anyways.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Thanks Justin, don’t know if you gave the non-paywalled link, but it is here, not at the Boston Globe main site. globecollegetown.substack.com/p/higher-ed-...
globecollegetown.substack.com
College campuses need to be liberated from their administrators
Higher ed is being strangled by absurd and costly rules. What message is that sending to students?
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Oracle, Workday, and PeopleSoft are the secret robber barons of the new guilded age, but we won’t have railroads and skyscrapers to show for it in a hundred years. In fact, we’ll have nothing as their garbage dissolves into cyberspace.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Finally found a use for this meme.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Has faculty administrative load even been eased, which is the whole purpose of administration?
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
‪Please every academic, let the world know, has ordering books, distributing a syllabus, advising a student club, th most basic administrative tasks, become more or less efficient in the era of millions spent on software and administrators? globecollegetown.substack.com/p/higher-ed-...
globecollegetown.substack.com
College campuses need to be liberated from their administrators
Higher ed is being strangled by absurd and costly rules. What message is that sending to students?
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I wrote for the Boston Globe about the scandalous higher-ed spending on digital infrastructure that has increased inefficiency. globecollegetown.substack.com/p/higher-ed-...
globecollegetown.substack.com
College campuses need to be liberated from their administrators
Higher ed is being strangled by absurd and costly rules. What message is that sending to students?
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Reposted by Barry Lam
Shen-yi Liao 廖顯禕 @liao.shen-yi.org · 09/09/2026
It's scandalous that for-profit companies like SpringerNature and Elsevier rent-seek from academic publishing and profit off of our labor. I'm also convinced by @hiphination.bsky.social that it's just as scandalous that for-profit digital infrastructure companies do the same in higher education.
globecollegetown.substack.com
College campuses need to be liberated from their administrators
Higher ed is being strangled by absurd and costly rules. What message is that sending to students?
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
We had family movie weekend and I got outvoted. We ended up seeing The End of Oak Street and I’m royally pissed.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
First Dolly, then Tim Curry, and now the voice of Optimus Prime. Not a good week for 80s kids.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
HR trainings be like: You must score 90 or above to pass this training. (56 min to go). What is the best reason not to bully your co-workers? a) good reason 1 b) good reason 2 c) good reason 3
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Just imagining what it’s like to be journeymen mixed doubles players making $100,000 a year hoping to make it $120,000 and seeing Serena Williams and Carlos Alcaraz across the net from you in Round 1.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
At Princeton Anthony Appiah started intro to M&E with “On Sense and Reference.”
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
You don't mean this Parker. The federal government provides essential services, even in the Trump era. Millions of people rely on it for health care, food, safety, medical and scientific research, national parks, and law enforcement. The US civil service are our heroes.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
What if, a philosophy journal will publish your AI-written article, but only in Gibberlink?
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
The name “Bruce” peaked in 1952 and declined since; it is well outside the top 500 baby names. Meanwhile, many old names for girls like “Sophia” swung back to #1 for Gen Zers. I think it’d be great to see “Bruce” be the name of a new generation. Any other old-timey names due for a comeback?
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Or a substack post. hiphination.substack.com/p/what-if-th...
hiphination.substack.com
What if the Culture Wars had the Ethics of Actual War?
Proportionality, Necessity, and Legitimate Targets
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Wrote up my last skeet idea into a short post. hiphination.substack.com/p/what-if-th...
hiphination.substack.com
What if the Culture Wars had the Ethics of Actual War?
Proportionality, Necessity, and Legitimate Targets
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
I’m starting to think the culture wars could use some ethics of actual wars. A little proportionality and necessity, distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate targets, and defensive versus punitive versus aggressive aims…maybe people will be more responsible.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
This is your “Mac and Me” bit.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Delta faucets makes completely nonstandard sizes and threads of nuts and bolts so that a $2 repair is impossible to make. You have to buy a $50 nut from Delta’s website or buy a brand new $150 faucet. Is there a kind of capitalism I can support that says that this is bad?
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
They’ve been shitty for a month. Just absolutely garbage pitching.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
I am currently watching both Suits and Reacher. Am I basic?
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Oh they would never publish a magazine article or book about such a life.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Maybe basing hiring policy and decisions in academia on the basis of social media trends was part of the problem and also not part of the solution.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
I taught at Vassar 2006-2022, was chair in 2020-2022. My stories put Tyler Austin Harper’s to shame, and every one of my colleagues would nod in agreement. Those were wild times.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
A decade of austerity measures at SLACs eased in 2020 because of George Floyd. But the top-down way admin implemented hiring forced the hand of understaffed, desperate departments. Candidates had to be everything, not just good biologists or historians. They had to be saviors. It was driven by admin
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I spoked to Heather Bigley of BYU Radio about the 1960 film Spartacus, and concluded that the message of the film is that the vicious are incapable of understanding the virtuous. The motivations of the latter are alien to the former. open.spotify.com/episode/6V0k...
open.spotify.com
Spartacus: Vicious v Virtuous
Voiceover: Movies that Move Us · Episode
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
The skeet was fully meant in the way you are thinking but I’m afraid the entirety of BlueSky took it literally.
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Barry Lam @hiphination.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Its a fantastic show, shaped my moral sensibilities.
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